As I begin here’s a completed view of the floor plan that we’re going to go through and create, our wall elevation and finally a cross section. Let’s open up the program and begin our floor plan. Chief Architect residential design software includes the major architectural elements for walls, windows, doors, cabinets, electrical, roofs, and framing – everything that you need for residential design.

To begin our kitchen I’m going to use an exterior wall tool and I’m going to shape out the rectangular room, just simply by drawing our walls. You’ll notice when I get to the final wall there I get a visual indicator that it snaps to show me alignment. With our dimension tools we have an automatic exterior dimension that you can place the dimensions with, and when you have these walls you can resize them just by simply clicking on them or you can highlight the dimension and enter in a specific number.

In this case I’ll enter 24’ and again if you want to highlight the wall, you can easily move it, resize it. Let’s go ahead and select this dimension and we’ll enter in 32’.

Once we’ve got that setup, if you’re a kitchen and bath designer let’s go ahead and zoom in here. You’ll notice that my dimension is actually going to the outside of this wall, and in Chief Architect our walls are actually composed of different layers. Let’s explore this wall just for a minute. In this wall type you’ll notice that it actually has six different layers here, sheet rock, siding, the sheathing and when I do a materials list all of these components will show up.

Kitchen and bath designers or interior designers typically only want to dimension to the wall surface, so I can set my dimensions up to do that and we also have a specific tool to allow you to do your interior dimensions.

Home improvement can be a great endeavor to begin, no matter how much knowledge or skill you have associated with it. Don’t let the TV shows about home improvement fool you! Home improvement is more than just big jobs. Read through these tips to see the fun that can be had with this endeavor.

Avoid allowing contractors to work on your house without signing a contract. If you can have the contract checked by a lawyer, you should do so. You should put in when the work will be finished, any guarantees on work, and what is going to be done.

Decide which room in your home will be the focus of your first renovation project. Keep in mind that remodeling can be tackled room by room to preserve your budget. Plan ahead where you want to remodel and keep an eye out for deals. Plan ahead if you want to save money on home improvement.

When doing home improvement, watch the highly visible improvements. Whoever looks at your house is going to go off of what they see, so the last thing you want to present to them is peeling paint or some untrimmed hedges, which can cause them to not buy the house. Even though cosmetic improvements are not usually the most vital improvements, when the goal is the sale of your house, they are!

Put nail holes in the rim of paint can. The channel into which the lid fits typically fills with paint, and when you make an attempt to replace that lid, paint spills onto the can sides. If you pound some holes in the top of the can it will prevent this problem from rearing its ugly head.

Do not get rid of your doors because they look dirty. Take the door down and then sand it. You want to reveal the bare wood. Then, find an oil that you can paint over the door with. Change to more modern doorknobs, too.

Ask for references before hiring anyone to make home improvements. You will be allowing someone to come into your home and make changes; therefore, it is important to check them out thoroughly. Call the references and inquire about the contractor and his work.

Add exhaust fans to high moisture areas, such as bathrooms, cooking areas, and laundry rooms. Moist, humid air can cause mold and mildew. Ventilation also lowers the amount of humidity, which prevents wall rot due to trapped condensation.

Remember to put good ventilation (e.g. a window) in your bathroom. When steam is generated from the shower, mold could possibly form. Simply continuing to repaint the bathroom walls will not adequately kill the mold. It is better to make a change to prevent it from forming in the first place. Install a ventilation fan or a window to reduce the humidity in the space.

As mentioned earlier, home improvement projects can benefit anyone that undertakes them. You need to know a few things but you don’t need to go crazy researching about everything. Keep all of the tips fresh in the front of your mind and start chopping away at the needed jobs once they’ve had time to soak.

It’s inevitable that chisels and planes will need re-sharpening with use. All you will need to do this is an oil stern and a can of household oil. Apply a quantity of oil to a stone. With a gentle grinding action, the sharp end of a tool can be renewed. Make sure there’s plenty of oil on the stone so as to stop any abrasion of the metal. Smooth off the back edge of the chisel and the sharp edge should be ready to be used.

Sharpening a plane is exactly the same but make sure you familiarize yourself with how the plane comes apart. Sharpen the plane blade on the oil stone. Smooth off the back edge as with the chisel and don’t forget to remove any excess oil off the blade.

Whilst the floor boards are up, any central heating pipes that are exposed should be checked to see if they’ve been insulated. This will help prevent knocking and rattling. You can wrap the pipes in air felt insulation. If the new floor boards have been cut with a joist, a new support for the new boards must be fixed to the sides. Drill and screw this don’t use nails. Cut the floor boards to length. You may find that new floor boards are slightly thinner than those that you’ve taken up; in this case they may need packing up.

Find a suitable timber to pack your boards up with. Fix this with pins to the joist. Now position the boards. Make sure you mark the position of any cables or pipes onto the floorboards. Knock a wedge shape in between the old boards and the new boards, which will tighten up the new boards before fixing. Drill through two floor boards avoiding any marks for cables or pipes and screw the floor boards down. Now measure the gap to be filled if it’s not a full floor board. Mark off both ends and cut to size. Make sure you cut off the side with the groove, not the side with the tongue. This should now be positioned. Mark into place if necessary and fix by drilling and screwing as before.

Ok we are on a GE side by side refrigerator, the complaint is that the flapper here for the dispenser doesn’t close all the way so we are just going to go ahead and actuate it, I can feel that it’s open right now, we can see once it closes, yeah it’s just hanging open right now so what we will… there is probably some corrosion which normally happens on the solenoid back in here so we can pop this apart and take a closer look and find out exactly what it is.

Ok so we are going to access our solenoid, to get there, we are just going to remove this touchpad assembly that pops off from the bottom, we have our wires, we are going to disconnect them, they are all different sizes so you can’t mix them up so there is no need to label or mark anything, we will set that aside, to get this apart, there are Phillips screws right here, there are four of them, we are going to take those out.

Now we can remove this whole housing, it will pull straight out, we will set that aside and now we can see our solenoid and our flapper up here, so here is our flapper and our solenoid and it’s all connected, there is a lot of corrosion on the plunger for the solenoid so if I open it up, it’s so corroded, it doesn’t want to slide back up freely to allow the door to close so we need to replace this solenoid assembly.

Ok so we are going to replace our solenoid, there are three Phillips screws, one, two and three, we are going to take out the bottom two and then we will just loosen the top. Ok so we switched to a handheld because of the corrosion on the screw because we don’t want to slip it out so we got it loose which will loosen our solenoid. So to remove it, I am going to open up the flapper door, when I pull the solenoid out, because of the top, it goes through the plunger and now we have removed our bad solenoid with our rusty plunger.

So we have our new component, first thing we do when we go to feed this, the little arm that’s on the flapper, we have to feed it through the slot here on our plunger so I will open it up, do everything in reverse fashion, get that in there, tuck the top part of the solenoid behind the screw that’s in there, there we go and now I am going to put the bottom two screws in to mount this.

Now that those are in there so now I am going to use my hand screw driver to tighten up the top screw so I don’t strip out the threads so now my solenoid is in there completely, make sure it’s going to function and close which it wasn’t doing last time so that’s good so now we go ahead and move forward to reinstalling the rest of the dispenser parts.

Alright so we have the rest of our dispenser housing, we want to make sure that we don’t pinch any wires so we feed them up into the positions they are supposed to be and this will slide back into place there then we can put our screws back in. Just want to be careful not to over tighten these because you will crack the housing. Alright so that’s on there now, now we are going to take our little touch pad computer, plug our harnesses into it, like I said before, there are all different sizes so you can’t mix them up, so our light is on, turn the light off and I am just going to remount it, snap it in place just like that so now I want to make sure that my flapper is going to open and close properly so I am going to go ahead and hit it, I can feel that it’s open and it just closed and just to verify, I am going to open the freezer door, look down through the chute and make sure that it looks like it’s closed all the way and it’s closed all the way so there we are.

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John Bosch and NorthPoleInc.

John Bosch has been working on things as long as he can remember, taking anything he could get his hands on apart, even as a small child (and eventually learning how to put them back together!) That early curiosity lead to a life-long passion for helping people fix whatever needed fixing, from home roofs to cars, kitchen appliances to stereo equipment. With years of professional experience under his belt, John has ventured into the 'modern world' of blogging to help share his passion and his knowledge with others. You'll find a wide array of repair based articles here, and general DIY type help, suggestions and recommendations. We hope you'll find what you're looking for.